God’s Cantos y Cuentos
Dr. Matilde Moros listens for an excess of possibility
My vocation is like the crow of roosters announcing a new day, a new possibility.
Every time I visit a Latin American country, where the sound is common, I am reminded that nature often calls us to hear the divine. My theology is one of “excess of possibility,” in which oyendo—understanding/heeding—the divine in all of life is a way to God.
It has not always been easy to experience God with a canto de esperanza.
Some of the lessons I’ve learned have come through the tales of common country folk in Latin America who still believe that indeed the rivers, the mountains, and the trees around us are alive, sacred, and a way to connect with God. The wisdom I inherited is that Mother Earth has a story to sing and that pondering on the lullabies found in nature--birds singing, rivers humming, symphonic tropical forests, and the wind whirling across silent mountains--is a form of prayer.
But it is not easy to hear this song of joy and hope in the midst of the sounds of horror.
I grew up in a place where human rights and those of the environment considered sacred by many are being disposed of by others. It is not always easy to perceive this beauty when the screeching of terror interrupts our meditation. Even then, can we still hear God in our call to worship and our call to justice?
Just as murdering environmental activists is now common, the U.S. has normalized the practice of keeping children in cages for a lack of immigration and humane policies. The sounds of Central American children recorded in detention centers have held me captive. My Latin(a)-American heart breaks when the voices of the children of Berta Cáceres in Honduras and the voices of the 207 murdered environmentalists, 60% of them in Central America and South America, call out for justice. Their cries make it difficult to turn a deaf ear to the suffering of both the environment and society in my beloved Latin America--indeed all around our beloved planet.
The People’s songs and cuentos are the music of lamentation. These sounds are just as important to my justice-led theology as those found in nature. It is critical that we continue to sing our songs and tell our stories so that these atrocities and their destructive impact on our world’s holiness can be known and eradicated.
“Yo no canto por cantar ni por tener buena voz, canto porque la guitarra tiene sentido y razón.”
Sound has marked my entering into sacred spaces. Sacred music and nature have equally impacted my theology and, in connection to testimonies against human-rights violations, led me to prayerful reflection. These sounds have filled my life experience as a Latina who spent her early years in Latin America, where, like her father, she was born before settling in the United States, my white mother’s homeland. I identify both as a Latin American and as a U.S.A. Latina.
My background with stories and theology dates back to my work with social justice and human rights during the Sanctuary Movement in the 1980’s, when I learned the sacred value of sound from testimony given by Salvadorans at churches. There, they retold the violent trauma they had experienced in the war they were escaping, giving thanks for being alive. Their courage to raise their trembling voices propelled my theological search for justice.
“Antes que nazca el día, los pájaros del monte nos dan sus melodías”
In the summer of 1982, as the Contra War began, I was asked to interpret interviews in what was one of the first fact-finding and witnessing trips by ecumenical groups to visit Nicaragua. In one of the Nicaraguan Peasant Mass hymns, the cantor states that, before the break of dawn, the birds of the field are already singing a melody. The cantor teaches that this is a song against the injustices committed by humanity. The singer then leads the worshiping community to proclaim that, just like the birds of the field sing a worshipful song to God, they also clamor for God to bring forth justice. This song blends my concern for human rights with my concern for environmental justice. Mirrored are the words of Jesus, who asks us to follow the examples in nature:
Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin (Matthew 6:28)
Look at the birds of the air, for they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns (Matthew 6:26)
This example is embedded in my Latinoamericana mindset and soul. As Victor Jara the martyred Chilean singer sang in “Manifiesto”: Yo no canto por cantar.
On my part, I do not sing just to sing, but to work toward a new song as a clamor for justice.
